Time stretched into a thick, syrupy crawl. Ravi saw every detail of the axe's descent: the rough, pitted steel of the head, the dark grain of the wooden handle, the grim set of the executioner's jaw. His body, true to form, refused to move. He squeezed his eyes shut, a pathetic, final surrender. A grunt from the man above him. A rush of air.
This was it.
Instead of the shearing agony he expected, there was a dull, almost gentle thud against his shoulder. It felt like being tapped with a rolled-up newspaper.
It was followed by a sound that didn't belong. A hideous, resonant twang, like a giant guitar string snapping, followed by a clatter of metal on stone.
Silence. Not the empty silence of the void, but a heavy, waiting silence, thick with the breath of a hundred onlookers.
Ravi opened his eyes.
The executioner was standing frozen, his muscular arms still locked in the follow-through of his swing. But his hands were empty. At Ravi's feet lay the axe head, or what was left of it. The cutting edge was folded back on itself, crumpled inward like tin foil. The handle, a splintered stick, lay a few feet away.
The big man stared at his trembling, empty hands, then at the ruined weapon, then at Ravi. His face, moments ago a mask of grim duty, was now slack with pure, uncomprehending shock.
Ravi was still on his knees, unharmed. He felt a phantom tingle where the axe should have connected, the ghost of a pain that never arrived. He lifted a hand and touched his shoulder. Smooth skin. Untorn fabric. Nothing.
He was alive. He wasn't bleeding. He wasn't even bruised.
His brain, starved for a logical explanation, offered up a series of frantic, inadequate possibilities. The axe was a fake. A prop. This is a prank. A dream.
A sharp voice cut through the stunned silence, snapping the tableau. "What is the meaning of this? Explain yourself, Torvin!"
The voice came from a severe-looking man standing on a raised platform of broken marble. He wore a dark, high-collared tunic embroidered with a silver key, and his face was a knot of pure fury. The crowd, a ragged assembly of hollow-cheeked onlookers, murmured amongst themselves, their fear turning to confused awe.
The executioner, Torvin, finally found his voice. It was a choked, strangled thing. "Warden… I… The axe… it just… broke." He looked at Ravi with wide, terrified eyes. "Against him."
The Warden's gaze fixed on Ravi, sharp and piercing. It wasn't the look of a man witnessing a miracle. It was the look of a man finding a serpent in his bed. "Broke? Or was broken?" he spat. "He wears a warding charm? A deflection glyph under his rags?"
Ravi didn't know what any of that meant. All he knew was that the Warden's anger was now pointed directly at him, a weapon far more terrifying than a faulty axe. He had to get out. Now.
He scrambled backward on the dusty cobblestones, kicking up dirt and pebbles. His movements were clumsy, graceless, driven by a surge of pure, undiluted panic. His heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird.
"Don't let him escape!" the Warden bellowed. "He's a blasphemer! A void-touched trickster! Seize him!"
Two guards in studded leather jerked into motion, drawing short, crude swords as they moved to flank him. Their faces were uncertain, spooked by what they'd just witnessed, but the Warden's command pushed them forward.
Survival instinct, the one command his body never disobeyed, screamed louder than his confusion. Ravi lurched to his feet and ran.
He didn't pick a direction. He just chose away. Away from the broken axe, the furious Warden, the encroaching guards. He half-stumbled, half-sprinted through the gathered crowd. People scrambled to get out of his path, shouting in alarm, their expressions a mixture of fear and wonder. He was no longer just a condemned man; he was an omen, a disruption, something terrifying and unknown.
His lungs burned. His legs, clumsy and untrained, protested with every jarring step. He was a terrible runner. But fear was a powerful fuel. He dodged a toppled stone pillar, vaulted over a low, crumbling wall, and plunged into a labyrinth of ruined buildings that bordered the execution square.
The shouts of the guards faded behind him, muffled by the stone skeletons of scorched-out homes. He ran until the stitch in his side became a white-hot knife and his vision started to blur at the edges. Finally, he ducked into the dark maw of a collapsed tavern, the air thick with the smell of stale ale and old ashes. He pressed himself into the deepest shadow behind what was once a bar, his chest heaving, his body trembling uncontrollably.
He stayed there for a long time, listening. The sounds of pursuit were distant, disorganized. They didn't seem to be looking very hard. Perhaps they were too afraid.
The adrenaline began to recede, leaving a cold, terrifying clarity in its wake. He was alone. In a strange, ruined city. In a world that was not his own.
He slowly, carefully, slid down the wall until he was sitting in the dirt. He raised his shaking hands and looked at them under a sliver of gray light filtering through a crack in the ceiling. They were just hands. His hands. Soft, uncalloused, pathetic.
Then, with a dread that was colder and sharper than any fear he had ever known, he reached up and touched the spot on his shoulder where the axe had landed.
He pressed his fingers against the rough-spun fabric of the shirt he'd been given. Beneath it, he felt the smooth, solid warmth of his own skin. No cut. No welt. Not even a hint of tenderness.
He closed his eyes, replaying the moment. The whistle of the air. The executioner's grunt. The solid, definitive thud of the impact.
It wasn't a trick. It wasn't a faulty weapon.
That massive, sharpened block of executioner's steel had hit him with enough force to sever a spine. And his body hadn't given way. The axe had.